Nothing quite exposes the rotten and intensely selfish and individualist nature of the capitalist system like the amount of wealth generated by the pharmaceutical industry. It was reported in the Times that a small group of “entrepreneurs” have exploited a loophole on non-branded drugs to inflate the price of them by up to 12,500% – an increase of £263 million a year. This is enough to employ an extra 7,000 junior doctors.
This is a not a new phenomenon – as reported in the Socialist last year, ‘pharma-bro’ Martin Shkreli bought the patent for a common AIDS drug, Daraprim, and increased its price more than 1,000%.
These are extreme examples, but they are indicative of the global trend of increasing prices in recent years and of the massive disparity between the cost to produce pharmaceuticals and the price at which they are sold to healthcare providers.
The Socialist Party sees that the only solution to this potentially life threatening exploitation is to fully nationalise the profiteering pharmaceutical industry and kick big business out of the NHS.
